September 2026

Kontio by Amy Kelly

The snowstorm, a dense swarm of white bees humming and covering the landscape, prevented him from finding the shovel. Another 12 hours in this abyss of white. Onni wished he had put on his extra pair of socks. His toes felt branded by thousands of hot pokers. The wind smacked his cheeks and forced the air from his lungs. Onni pressed on against his panic. The strangulation of cold constricted his chest. The fear caused him to want to run back to his cabin, unzip and peel back his orange Arctic 25 survival suit and hide under the covers. Life aboard the Kontio was dependent on each crew member doing their part. Systems were checked, coordinates confirmed, and decks shoveled. As the oldest son of a single mother in Helsinki, Onni knew something about being counted on.

Emboldened by the dependency of his crew upon him, Onni felt along the wall, finding the shovel handle. The task of distinguishing the deck from the storm was impossible. As each shovel of snow was lifted, it blew sideways. Howling, gnashing wind pushed against his body, raking his face with white claws. Onni continued. The white steel hull groaned as it pushed through the ice. The breaking ice sent vibrations through the hull of the ship. Onni felt swallowed by the sound and white.

Still, he shoveled on.

A shriek and a crack. An iceberg calved. Onni felt the joints in his bones and the space between his teeth filled with the sound of it falling. The sound and snow made a white vortex that occasionally would reveal where he shoveled, but even the sidelights, meant to signal to other boats, were invisible in the storm.

Finally, the path to the orange rescue boat was clear. Onni looked up to track the blue Bear logo, looming on the white side of the vessel or the flag of Finland atop the vessel. The flag of snow with the shock of a blue cross for lakes. Strained as his eyes did, he could only see the white in front of him.

Shrieking and moaning. More ice. Onni remembered the horrible wales of a drowning moose he and the crew had rescued in sunlight. Desperate steam rising from flaring nostrils, hooves smashing the surrounding ice in a terror filled bid for traction. The ice showed no mercy, continuing to open as the ocean threatened to swallow. Eyes wild, bucking and thrashing. Onni and his crew had lowered themselves to tie the moose and used the boom on their rescue boat to pull the moose onto the ice. The moose charged the men as they scrambled from the ice to avoid being gored or stomped.

Nature didn’t shock him anymore.

This shrieking was louder now. An echo chamber of screams surrounded Onni as he slowly plodded to the door. Fear gripped Onni’s heart as he realized the shoveled path was covered with more snow. Onni struggled to distinguish white from white.

The hairs on the back of Onni’s neck rose. His ears were deafened by screams.

Was that a child among them?

Suddenly, Onni’s heart ached for his brother. Onni ran toward the child screams. Then the direction changed, from below, then above. What Onni would have given to have saved his brother from the frozen pond so many years ago. Grief wrote in indelible ink across his heart and face. His skin hung from his skull in a hypotonic scowl.

Drops of blood appeared. Red crystals dotted the deck forming a trail to the door.

“Help,” the child's voice shrieked as Onni’s fingers touched the latch on the door.

The snow blew into the port as he stepped inside. A dull ache coalesced in Onni’s chest as his senses took in the pool of blood in front of him and the screaming child outside.

Where was his crew?

Shutting the port door, he pulled down his hood to take in the sounds of the boat. The rhythm of crew members performing their duties was missing.

“Captain Aino,” Onni called the dark hallway.

Onnie continued down the hallway, his palms sweaty. He willed his senses to take in more than they could. Blood dripped down the hall on the floors, and doorknobs were smeared with it.

The big open mess hall, a TV played one of the many company-issued DVDs. “The Thing” was one of Onni’s favorite movies.

Food was still hot, and cutlery was left with half bites. Cigarettes were left in ashtrays, still smoking. The blood slicked the hallway and now snaked an oily path to the kitchen.

Onni braced himself against the wall. The air smelled of iron, fear, and sweat.

“Onni,” a voice beckoned down the hallway.

“Onni,” the chilling childlike voice from the deck bade him down the hall.

“I need to show you something.” Omnidirectional whispers filled the air. "Come now."

The whispers led him to the freezer. Pulling back the metal latch, Onni drew a deep breath before looking inside. Meat was piled in garbage bags. More meat than they would ever need for the remaining ten days of their journey. A small hole with something protruding caught Onni’s eye. As he drew near, he gasped. It was a finger bearing the captain’s ring. The room came into focus, and he saw the be-spectacled engineer hanging from a meat hook.

Fear overtook his body, and he sprinted to his cabin.

Not again. Not again. Onni thought, rocking himself. He tried to reconcile his beloved crew with the carnage that he had just seen.

“Onni. Don’t worry. I will take care of you. I always do.”

When the Kontio reached the port of Helsinki, its white flag with a blue cross blew steadily in the wind. The pride of Finland. All members of the crew were alive and accounted for except Onni. One shift, Onni had gone out to shovel snow and had never returned.